Riceyman Steps by Arnold Bennett — Read

Mr. and Mrs. Belrose occupied a small bedroom at the top of their house. As for her sister and his sister, they fitted their amplitudes into some vague "somewhere else," and those of the curious who in the way of business or otherwise knew how nearly the entire house was devoted to "wholesale," wondered where the two sisters-in-law did in fact stow themselves. The servant slept out.

In the middle of the night Mrs. Belrose raised her magnificent form out of the overburdened bed and went to the window to look forth on the Steps.