Can I speak plese

Martha rarely stops talking. Her response today to a request for five minutes' peace reminded me of this...

"That's jolly well what we want, free speech," said William excitedly. "I'm just about sick of being told to shut up the minute I open my mouth. I hardly ever get a chance to start a sentence, let alone finish it. I don't think I've ever finished a sentence in all my life.

"It's just the same wherever I go. They say 'shut up' and 'be quiet' before I've got the first word out. It's a wonder to me I know how to talk at all with no-one even letting me say a word.

"Sometimes you can get half a sentence out at home but in school you can't talk in class, not on the stairs, not in the passage. It's funny to me that we haven't all turned deaf and dumb."

He stopped for breath. The Outlaws gazed at him, impressed by his eloquence, intrigued by the connection of William the vociferous, William who talked in season and out of season, at home and at school, in places where talking was forbidden as much as in places where talking was allowed, William whose penetrating voice was the daily and hourly affliction of all his neighbours... with a William who was deaf and dumb.

"Anyway," continued William, his eloquence exhausted. "We jolly well want free speech as much as those Cato people did."

William the Conspirator, Richmal Crompton