True, his own home was very humble, and yet there was an air of comfort and refinement about it.

The Duke home had always impressed him as being cold and cheerless and ugly.
There were no protecting porches, no lawn, no flowers, and the barn yard had crept close up to the house.

It was a place to work.

The eating and the sleeping were provided, so that work could be done, farm and kitchen work with their dirt and litter.

The father and the mother and the daughter were slaves to work.