Lovely story!

These musings are correct in every way, but am I the only one who wishes we had heard more conversations between them before the proposal?

This is so, so beautiful. If only Hiddles felt this way about me... :D Very well done!

They have such a deep connection, their feelings are pure love a they were meant for each other.

This is beautifully written, and I wish you would continue on with it!

Very eloquant and beautiful - I enjoyed reading about William and Peggy (I just watched Return to Cranford last night). Thank you for sharing. :)

This is beautiful!

First of all, it's thrilling to see a new Cranfic appear on this site, and especially on a neglected subject: Peggy and William's romance.

Secondly, you convey very well William's coltishness, his modernity, his tendency to question things and think for himself - and also that twinkle in his eye as he contemplates the reasons behind the use of the sidesaddle. His intentions towards Peggy are strictly honorable, but he's still a guy, after all!

Getting back to those honorable intentions, the reader/viewer, ike William, gradually comes to see Peggy's worth.

You give us a nice sense of Peggy's modesty, youth, and awkwardness, but also her decency. I wondered a bit about the expressions "cute" and "sync," and actually looked in Gaskell to see if she used the former. "Sync" is a coinage of the 1920s, so I think Peggy would employ a more quaint term.

But this is a lovely story. You ought to submit it to LadyKatherine's Cranford community.