Dawn followed Mr. Howell through the red-blanketed bamboo French doors into the rustic opulence of the Howell hut. Once inside she gazed around, taking it all in. The huts looked so strange with all four walls! There was the neat pair of beds with their patterned tapa cloth blankets, the coconut chandelier, the giant seashell wash-basin, Mrs. Howell's dressing table with its long grass skirt, and the mysterious other room with its long, beaded curtain. Dawn shook her head, marveling. It was all real.

The real Mrs. Howell herself was seated at the dressing table. "Oh, there you are, Mary Ann, dear. I'm sorry the place isn't more presentable, but as you were gone all of yesterday and Ginger complained that she wasn't feeling well, there was no one left to clean for us."

Dawn raised an eyebrow and tried to stifle a giggle at the complete lack of irony in Mrs. Howell's tone. In the meantime Mr. Howell pulled a chair over to face his wife's. "Please do sit down, Mary Ann dear. Mrs. Howell was going to ask you about making her a new dress. Something in chiffon, wasn't it, my sweet? Assuming the next chest that floats ashore has chiffon in it, that is." He turned to go. "Well, I'll just leave you two ladies to discuss things, shall I?"

"Oh, wait a moment, Thurston, dear. I'd like you to stay. There's something much more urgent we ought to discuss, now that dear Mary Ann is here."

Her husband turned back, a suspicious look in his eye. "Lovey, what's this about? You haven't gotten me to help you under false pretenses, have you?"

Lovey was innocently shocked. "Of course not, Thurston! Whatever are you thinking? But the fact is, Mary Ann, that Thurston and I have come to regard you as the daughter we never had."

Dawn smiled fondly at the thought of her own relationship with Natalie. "Oh, that's very sweet, Mrs. Howell! Thank you."

"And we feel obliged to offer you the sort of guidance your parents would, if they were here on the island."

"We do?" Thurston Howell cleared his throat. "Well, that is to say, we do think of you as a daughter, certainly, Mary Ann. But honestly, Lovey, Mary Ann is a very sensible girl. I should think she would know when to come to us for advice, when she wants it."

"Oh, don't be silly, Thurston. If people only came to other people when they wanted advice, they'd never get the advice they really need. Like the kind you need now, Mary Ann, dear." Mrs. Howell leaned forward and patted Dawn's knee gently. "Advice about standards of propriety, for example."

Instinctively Dawn glanced down and hiked up the waistband of her shorts. "Oh, I'm sorry, Mrs. Howell. I know my navel peeks out every so often."

"And it's very charming!" Mr. Howell put in quickly -- too quickly, he realized, as he saw his wife's surprised glance. "Ahem…I mean…it's charming you should be so concerned about such a thing."

Mrs. Howell raised her eyebrows at her husband, but smiled at Dawn. "Yes, that's part of what I mean, my dear. The fact is that living here on this island makes demands on all of us, and we all have a responsibility to one another. Thurston and I, for example, have taken it upon ourselves to maintain the social standards by dressing appropriately for every occasion and creating our own exclusive club. It's difficult work, I grant you, but we do it out of a sense of public duty."

Dawn tried to look very serious, and hoped she was succeeding. "Well, I'm sure we all appreciate your sacrifice, Mrs. Howell. But what does this have to do with me?"

"A great deal, Mary Ann, dear. Here in this natural setting, our less civilized tendencies can easily get the better of us. Thurston and I have occasionally taken tea at three instead of four, simply because we were hungry. But we mustn't weaken. It's the first step on the slippery slope to savagery."

"And the next thing you know, you're a Yale man," added Mr. Howell.

"Oh. And have I been behaving like a Yale man…I mean woman?" The young actress's jaw muscles were twitching with repressed giggles now.

Mrs. Howell gave a slight, embarrassed lift of her satin-enveloped shoulders. "Well, my dear, I feel bound to point out that spending all day alone in the company of the Professor and Gilligan, and then their subsequent quarreling over you at dinner, looks like—"

The giggles burst out as full-fledged guffaws. "Oh, Mrs. Howell, is that what this is all about? That's absolutely ridiculous! They just wanted to be sure I was safe! And for heaven's sake, we didn't mean to spend the whole day together! We got lost!"

Mrs. Howell was alarmed at her young protégé's attitude. "Mary Ann, this is no laughing matter! Lost? My dear girl, are you truly that naïve? The Professor, lost? The man was a scoutmaster! Do you think they would have let him go out with a troop of little boys if he was the sort of man to become lost in a place he had lived in for almost three years?"

That calmed Dawn down a bit. "Well…Gilligan's not a scoutmaster," she offered lamely.

Mr. Howell now attacked from the other side. "No, I grant you, Mary Ann, but Gilligan has roamed about this island more than any of us, either going into hiding for one reason or another or looking for new pets to add to his menagerie. I could imagine him being lost for a short while, but hardly until nightfall."

Surrounded and outgunned, Dawn sighed and crossed her arms in a gesture of defeat. "Mr. and Mrs. Howell, believe me, those two are two of the sweetest fellows I've ever met. They're perfect gentlemen. I can't imagine either one of them trying to take advantage of me."

"Neither can I, my dear!" assured Mrs. Howell. "Oh, on the contrary! Perish the thought! But they are still men, and living on this island for so long has its pressures. And you are a very pretty girl. It isn't fair of you to put temptation in their way, however innocently. Even the strongest man can be swayed by a pretty face…or navel." She glanced up at her husband as she said this, and he had the good grace to blush.

"Well…" Dawn felt helpless. I have to stick near Bob and Russ, or we might not be able to get home! "What do you think I should do?"

Mrs. Howell lifted her gloved, bejeweled hands in a gesture of suggestion. "Well, my dear, if you have fond feelings for one of them, I suggest you tell him and bring things into the open!" She clasped her hands like a child over a new toy. "I should so love to plan a wedding!"

Both Thurston and Dawn rolled their eyes at that. "Lovey, my dear, remember the last time you tried to form a match between Mary Ann and Gilligan? It was a disaster on par with Neville Chamberlain's plea for peace!"

"Oh, Thurston, it wasn't as bad as all that. And I think a wife like Mary Ann would do Gilligan a world of good. Every man needs a wife to help build his character."

Dawn laughed. "I think I'd scare Gilligan to death. And what about the Professor?"

This time it was the millionaire who laughed. "Well, confidentially, Mary Ann, our Professor isn't exactly the great lover either. I'll never forget directing the love scene between him and Ginger when we made our silent film." He took on the Professor's affronted academic tone. "'Kissing on the mouth is far from sanitary! It can lead to all kinds of bacterial transfer!' I mean, really! What man worth his weight in hormones wouldn't give his right arm for a chance to—" this time he caught himself before Lovey even had a chance to glance in his direction, "—become a star in a Thurston Howell production?"

Fortunately for him, Mrs. Howell was still revelling in her dream of planning nuptials. "And besides, I'd always thought the Professor and Ginger would make a lovely couple. They're closer in height; it would look so much nicer in the wedding pictures."

Dawn sighed. "I'd rather take it slowly, Mrs. Howell, whatever I decide. But…" and a sudden impish smile lit her face. "I'll see what I can do."

Mrs. Howell's own smile was radiant. "Oh, that's wonderful, dear. Now, about that dress—"

Suddenly the air was rent by an explosion.

"What in the world?" they all cried, and raced out of the hut.