This was more than the ladies could bear. They shut up the house and left Plymouth. But this was also the end of Robert’s stay with his grandfather. The good doctor had endured a great deal, but he would not put up with this; and Robert was sent to Stratton, to his father. When the boy left school at Liskeard, he was articled to a lawyer, Mr. Jacobson, at Plymouth, a wealthy man in good practice, first cousin to his mother; but this sort of profession did not at all approve itself to Robert’s taste, and he remained with Mr. Jacobson a few months only. Whether he then turned his thoughts towards going into holy orders, cannot be told; but he persuaded his aunt, Mrs. Hodgson, to send him to Cheltenham Grammar School. The boy had great abilities, and a passionate love of books, but wanted application. He read a great deal, but his reading was desultory. He was, however, a good classic scholar. To mathematics he took a positive dislike, and never could master a proposition in Euclid. At Cheltenham he wrote some poems, and published them in a little book entitled _Tendrils_, _by Reuben_. They appeared in 1821, when he was seventeen years old. From Cheltenham, Robert S. Hawker went to Oxford, 1823, and entered at Pembroke; but his father was only a poor curate, and unable to maintain him at the university. Robert was determined to finish his course there. He could not command the purse of his aunt, Mrs. Hodgson, who was dead; and when he retired to Stratton for his long vacation in 1824, his father told him that it was impossible for him to send him back to the university. But Robert Hawker had made up his mind that finish his career at college he would. The difficulty was got over in a manner somewhat novel. There lived at Whitstone, near Holsworthy, four Miss I’ans, daughters of Colonel I’ans. They had been left with an annuity of £200 apiece, as well as lands and a handsome place. At the time when Mr. Jacob Hawker announced to his son that a return to Oxford was impossible, the four ladies were at Efford, near Bude, an old manor house leased from Sir Thomas Acland. Directly that Robert Hawker learnt his father’s decision, without waiting to put on his hat, he ran from Stratton to Bude, arrived hot and blown at Efford, and proposed to Miss Charlotte I’ans to become his wife. The lady was then aged forty-one, one year older than his mother; she was his godmother, and had taught him his letters.