As the servants have no regular hours of work and rest, they have often to take their meals at odd hours. Punctuality is not a Japanese virtue, and the members of the family are not always regular in their meals. The hours are governed by the movements of the master of the house, and they are fairly regular if he is a government official, a professional man, or an employee of a private firm or company, who has to be at his office at fixed hours; but if the master’s habits are irregular from necessity or inclination, the family meals suffer accordingly. The servants are also expected to be ready at every beck and call, for a great deal of trivial task is imposed upon them. They are, for instance, often called from the kitchen to the parlour or sitting-room and then sent to fetch an article from an adjoining room. But as most houses in Japan are only of one or two stories and the living-room is always on the ground-floor, it is no difficult matter to clap our hands, which is the usual way of summoning a servant, or to holloa to her, for the sound has merely to penetrate one or two sliding-doors or probably none at all in summer. Thus, from the very ease with which a servant may be summoned, she is made to do a great deal which could be readily done without her help. [Illustration: THE SERVANT AT THE SLIDING-DOOR.] The servant is trusted to a great degree. The lack of privacy which is one of the principal characteristics of a Japanese home places every room at the mercy of its inmates; and when the house is left for the day, as sometimes happens, in the servant’s charge, a dishonest domestic could easily purloin articles which would not be missed at the time. That such petty thefts are comparatively rare, must be put to the servant’s credit. On the other hand, she becomes a member of the family whose service she enters, to a greater extent than would be the case in other lands. The very lack of privacy makes her a party as it were to the private affairs of the family. She is set to work unmaking dresses or sewing them under her mistress’s eye and is often taught needlework, especially on long winter evenings, when mistress and servant talk together with less reserve than at other times, and a close sympathy arises between them, which may last through their lives. And many servants retain their love and respect for their mistress after they leave her service and call on her regularly every year with their husbands or children when they are married.