Gypsy Magic (The Little Matchmakers) by Judy Griffith Gill Page A

should stop us?”
    “But where can we go for a picnic in the rain?”
    “Didn’t you hear your daddy say he could find overhangs were the rain wouldn’t get him? If he can, we can, and we’ll take his lunch out to him, have a picnic in a cave.”
    “A picnic with Daddy?” Kevin’s face wrinkled in perplexity. This was obviously unheard of.
    “Of course with Daddy… If we can find him and his cave. So let’s get busy and make a lunch we can carry. I’m going to shred carrots and cabbage so we can make coleslaw and you could open a can of tuna for sandwiches.”
    Lance, as should have been expected, Gypsy realized upon finding him, was not under any overhang. Instead he was standing in the middle of the wide, grassy point which formed the north-western arm of the boomerang-shaped island. With his camera out, he took photographs of the spume flinging itself high over the rocks of a smaller, treeless island a quarter mile away. The reef between that one and the one where they stood, lay in the midst of a swirling, roiling froth, where white water mingled with black, a mottled stream of lumps that looked almost solid enough to walk on.
    Kevin stopped in his tracks, putting the kettle he carried onto the ground and squatting behind it, almost as if hoping it would shield him from the wrath he expected to be unleashed when his father was confronted with this crazy idea.
    “What are you doing out here?” Lance said when she came alongside him. “Don’t you know it’s raining?”
    “No,” Gypsy responded sarcastically. “I hadn’t noticed. I was beginning to wonder what that was, dripping off my hair and the tip of my nose. We brought lunch.”
    “Oh? You don’t want me in the cabin? Might I remind you just whose cabin it is?”
    “We came to have lunch with you, Lance. We brought a picnic.”
    “Are you out of your mind?”
    “Probably, but even so, here we are. And now the rest of it’s up to you. I made coleslaw, Kevin helped make sandwiches, there are cookies and apples, too, and if you look over there, your son has toted a kettle of water all the way from the creek… And hardly spilled more than half of it,” Gypsy added with a grin which did nothing to soften Lance’s stern countenance.
    “We hoped you could find us one of those overhangs you mentioned, build us a campfire in it so we could have our cocoa in a warm, snug cave with the rain dripping down outside. I think,” she said, staring hard at him, willing him to remember, “it would be… fun , Lance.”
    He gave her a startled look which relaxed after an instant into a crooked, half rueful grin. “Do you really?” he said. “Then I guess I’d better find a dent in the rocks which might be classed as a cave.” He turned to move. Gypsy stopped him.
    “First, don’t you think it would be a good idea to call Kevin over and ask him to help you look? After all I’m just a girl, and can’t go scrambling around rocks looking for a place until you men find me a safe route to get there.”
    “Just a girl…” he echoed, nodding, and for a few, precious seconds, his eyes danced with humor. Why that should make her feel so light-hearted, she had no idea, but she felt as if the next gust of wind might just lift her off her feet. “Yup,” Lance went on, “just a poor, weak girl… With the will of cold steel and more stubborn than a mule. What makes you think this is going to work?”
    With an unconscious note of pleading her voice, she said, trying for lightness, “Aren’t you willing to try?”
    Lance swallowed, turned away for a moment and stared out over the gray, windswept water. “If you want me to,” he said at length, then walked slowly toward Kevin who remained hunkered behind the kettle, waiting with strange impassiveness for the biting words he likely expected.
    His eyes flew upwards in surprise when Lance said “Gypsy wants to have a picnic in a cave. Come and help me find a place.” He assayed a smile, which was not