To the modern reader this abrupt dismissal of Richard’s war service may read oddly; to Heyer’s generation, however, it was an entirely appropriate response. She herself had been raised in an aspirational middle-class home and taught the importance of regulating one’s feelings, keeping a “stiff upper-lip” in the face of adversity, and of the need for restraint and discretion when discussing serious matters. While it is acceptable for Cicely to throw a cushion across the room, or vehemently express her distaste for modern living and complain of being bored, it would be pushing the bounds of good taste for her to discuss in detail, or properly acknowledge, Richard’s war service.

Though “A Proposal to Cicely” has less polish than her later stories and novels, she had already developed the knack of revealing character through dialogue: we quickly learn that Richard is intelligent, decent and well-bred and that Cicely is bright, impulsive and naïve. The dialogue is also an enjoyable throwback to an era when people said things like “honour bright!” “be a sport” “beastly” and “oh, rather!” When Cicely complains that she’s sick of dances, she tells Richard that she’s “been trotted round till I want to scream!”

Heyer herself attended dances and parties of the kind that bored Cicely, and her four later contemporary novels would also depict heroines who struggled with aspects of the post-War London social scene. As a young woman Heyer enjoyed dances, although she disdained studio parties and had no time for bohemians. Cicely is bored with town life, dances and society, and has decided to go “into seclusion.” For an upper-middleclass girl enjoying all the delights of 1920’s London, this meant an escape to the country. She and a friend take a cottage in a “quaint village” where they will escape from city life.

From here Heyer uses class difference as a driver for the rest of the story. Despite the destruction of so many mainstays of British life wrought by the Great War, England remained a strongly hierarchical society. Class still mattered and “A Proposal to Cicely” is the first of Heyer’s stories to reveal some of the attitudes prevalent at the time. These, initially subtle, class differences are first made known during Cicely’s exchange with a local farmer, Fred Talbot. In the secure knowledge that she is Talbot’s “better,” Cicely makes assumptions: “Come in to tea this afternoon, We’re fearfully bored. An’ then you can take us over the farm”. She receives “a shock” when he tells her he’s busy. Later in the story Heyer expresses the class differences more overtly: “Had he but known it, she was treating him as her inferior in that she still called him Mr. Talbot, and confined her conversation to farming.” He is simply a “diversion” from life in a small village where there “was no tennis and no society.”

But there were dogs. “A Proposal to Cicely” is the first time that Heyer brought dogs into a story and Cicely’s “Pekinese” [sic], Chu-Chu San, may have been modelled on the Pekingese Heyer herself had owned in her teens. Richard’s bull-terrier, Bill, is also a breed Heyer would own, though several years later. Though neither dog is as developed as Heyer’s later canine characters, and serve rather as props, Bill does have a small dramatic role towards the end of the story. In this first short story, Heyer had not yet realised the full potential of the canine character, but it would not be many months before she did.