Met His Match

At Whit's End, Penny is helping Connie polish her profile for an online dating site called e-matchup. Connie's honest description of herself as a cheerful girl with reddish-brown hair sounds, Penny teases, like an ad for an Irish setter, so Penny starts dressing it up, turning blue-green eyes into "eyes the color of the sky right before dawn" and a tumble into a window well into rock climbing. Connie, who has only heard back from a few prisoners so far, reluctantly lets Penny and Olivia Parker rewrite the profile for her, as long as they keep it honest.

Olivia has come in with a worry of her own: Mr. Whittaker seems quietly sad today, so sad that even the curlicue on her ice cream cone looked droopy. Connie explains that today would have been Whit's wedding anniversary, and that his wife Jenny passed away just before he opened Whit's End. Talking it over, Penny and Olivia decide that since marriage is wonderful and Whit never found the right woman again, they should help him. When the dating site offers a deal to add a friend's profile for free, they secretly post one for Whit, describing him as a Christian entrepreneur, inventor, and adventurer who occasionally saves the world. Penny insists on adding a flourish: "You'll be impressed by my full and lustrous mustache."

Their matchmaking begins with Olivia's grandmother, Lucia Ortega, a traveling hairdresser whose business is called Scissors on Wheels. Remembering how Penny's own parents fell in love over a buzz cut, the girls arrange for sparks to fly when Lucia comes to cut Whit's hair. Instead, Lucia reports that Whit barely said anything except no, and as for that famous mustache, she declares, "You could hide a hoagie in that thing." Next, a woman with the promising profile name Cookies and Books answers Whit's ad and agrees to come meet him. She turns out to be Mrs. Kramer, which sends Connie diving behind a napkin dispenser. Mrs. Kramer quizzes a baffled Whit about tiny dogs that fit in a purse, and when he admits he is more of a big dog person, she announces it just is not meant to be and sweeps out.

Then Olivia drops off her mom's forgotten lunch at the medical office and chats with Dr. Lily Graham, who is kind, smart, adventurous, and dreaming of starting a medical mission in Botswana. Convinced they have finally found Whit's perfect match, Penny and Olivia stage a candlelit French dinner on the patio, telling Whit and Dr. Graham that Penny needs feedback on her French cooking. Connie wants no part of the scheme, warning that Whit will see right through it, though she does agree to make the crème brûlée. To everyone's surprise, the dinner sparkles. Whit and Lily trade stories about Paris, the Middle East, and accidentally eating ants in Brazil, and even Connie has to admit the two look enamored.

The next morning, Whit and Lily are whispering, giggling, and making hushed phone calls. They gather the girls to share big news: the dinner became a date, they feel God has brought them together, and since they share a passion for Scripture and missions, "we just decided we should get married!" They plan to move to Botswana at the end of the month, and Whit will have to sell Whit's End. As Penny and Olivia sputter that this is much too fast, that they should pray about it and think it through, Whit gently springs the trap: did the girls consult God before setting him up with Lily, or Lucia, or Mrs. Kramer? He has known about the scheme all along, and the engagement is a lesson, not a real one. Whit's End is safe, and Whit and Lily explain that while neither is opposed to marrying again, the girls were trusting their own idea of what was best instead of leaving Whit's future to God and to Whit himself. To Penny and Olivia's shock, Connie was in on the whole thing, and she thinks they deserved it. She has also finally solved the mystery of her silent dating profile: the line about the full and lustrous mustache was accidentally added to her ad instead of Whit's, which explains why the only responses she is getting are advertisements for mustache wax.