"but to the north there was a bank of cirro-cumulus, a mackerel sky, or Schaefchenwolken--"sheep cloud"--as she remembered her father calling it. For some reason he had used German when talking about clouds and sea conditions; an odd habit that she had accepted as just being one of the things he did. "The weather," he had once said to her, smiling, "is German. I don't know why; it just is. Sorry."