When the living was vacant--the present holder, however, was uncommon tough and did not mean dying--he should follow out the instructions of his father's will, and if Robert did not want the thing he could say so.
In the autumn Robert and his mother went back to Oxford.

The following spring he redeemed his Oxford reputation completely by winning a Fellowship at Merton after a brilliant fight with some of the beat men of his year, and in June he was ordained.
In the summer term some teaching work was offered him at Merton, and by Mr.Grey's advice he accepted it, thus postponing for a while that London curacy and that stout grapple with human need at its sorest for which his soul was pining.

'Stay here a year or two,' Grey said, bluntly; 'you are at the beginning of your best learning time, and you are not one of the natures who can do without books.

You will be all the better worth having afterward, and there is no lack of work here for a man's moral energies.' Langham took the same line, and Elsmere submitted.

Three happy and fruitful years followed.