The housemaid’s chief duty is to keep the rooms tidy. She is called in Japanese the “middle-worker,” as she stands midway between the cook and the lady’s maid. She dusts the paper sliding-doors, shelves, and other woodwork, sweeps the mats, and scrubs the woodwork, especially the grooves of the sliding-doors, the shelves, the wooden edges of the alcoves, the pillars, and the verandahs. She lays the beds every night, takes them up in the morning, and puts them into the closets. She has plenty of work in keeping the rooms tidy, above all the sitting-room where almost everything, except the brazier and tea-shelf, has to be cleared immediately it is done with. Besides, the shelves have such a knack of getting untidy as all sorts of things are for the moment put on them. If there are children in the family, she looks after them, which is no light task as they roam all over the house and after their nature scatter things about wherever they go. She also does a great deal of needlework; she mends the clothes and does most of the work where skill or delicacy is not required. Washing, too, is no child’s play in a large family. [Illustration: THE HOUSEMAID AT WORK.] The lady’s maid is in most cases a young girl from thirteen to sixteen years old. She looks after the clothes; as soon as they are taken off, she folds them and puts them into a chest of drawers or hangs them up if of daily wear. She waits at meals and does work about the sitting-room. She attends to the visitor, sets the cushion for him, and brings in tea, cake, and the brazier and “tobacco-tray.” She helps, too, to look after the children. Where there is a nurse for the little children, she naturally attends to them and carries them about; but generally the housemaid and the lady’s maid divide the duty between them; and as the latter is a young girl, she has to be very much helped by the housemaid.