"If it makes you happier, mother, it is all right with me," said Clifton (14). "I don't know about that. . . ." muttered Allen (12). But soon afterwards, the future Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army received a brief, secret note from Allen: "I hope you will come to Fire Island. Don't be nervous, it is O.K. with me. (Signed) A friend in need is a friend indeed. ..." A few months later, Lieut. Colonel George Catlett Marshall became Allen's stepfather.Katherine Marshall has written what she frankly calls "this homespun account" because "General Marshall has told me that he will never write his own memoirs, his knowledge of people and events being too intimate for publication." The result is a friendly, chatty, modest collection of data and trivia that rarely goes beyond the bounds of domesticity.