The Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells

"What's the reason the girls never get down to breakfast any more? " asked Lapham, when he met his wife at the table in the morning. He had been up an hour and a half, and he spoke with the severity of a hungry man. "It seems to me they don't amount to anything. Here I am, at my time of life, up the first one in the house. I ring the bell for the cook at quarter-past six every morning, and the breakfast is on the table at half-past seven right along, like clockwork, but I never see anybody but you till I go to the office."

"Oh yes, you do, Si," said his wife soothingly. "The girls are nearly always down. But they're young, and it tires them more than it does us to get up early."