Bruno the Bear

Excerpt from The Bond of Love

For the next three hours she would not leave that cage. She gave him tea, lemonade, cakes, ice cream and what not. Then ‘closing time’ came and we had to leave. My wife cried bitterly; Bruno cried bitterly; even the hardened curator and the keepers felt depressed. As for me, I had reconciled myself to what I knew was going to happen next.

“Oh please, sir,” she asked the curator, “may I have my Bruno back”?

Hesitantly, he answered, “Madam, he belongs to the zoo and is Government property now. I cannot give away Government property. But if my boss, the superintendent agrees, certainly you may have him back.”

There followed the return journey home and a visit to the superintendent’s office. A tearful pleading: “Bruno and I are both fretting for each other. Will you please give him back to me?” He was a kind-hearted man and consented. Not only that, but he wrote to the curator telling him to lend us a cage for transporting the bear back home.

Back we went to the zoo again, armed with the superintendent’s letter. Bruno was driven into a small cage and hoisted on top of the car; the cage was tied securely, and a slow and careful return journey back home was accomplished.

Once home, a squad of workers were engaged for special work around our yard. An island was made for Bruno. It was twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide, and was surrounded by a dry moat, six feet wide and seven feet deep. A wooden box that once housed fowls was brought and put on the island for Bruno to sleep in at night. Straw was placed inside to keep him warm, and his ‘baby’, the gnarled stump, along with his ‘gun’, the piece of bamboo, both of which had been sentimentally preserved since he had been sent away to the zoo, were put back for him to play with. In a few days the workers hoisted the cage on to the island and Bruno was released. He was delighted; standing on his hind legs, he pointed his ‘gun’ and cradled his ‘baby’. My wife spent hours sitting on a chair there while he sat on her lap. He was fifteen months old and pretty heavy too!

Which word from the passage describes “a keeper or custodian of a collection”?