about seven o'clock
Not until late in the fall , when Madame Janauschek came to the opera house to play `` Macbeth , '' did Mehronay uncover his intrigue . Then for the first time in his three years ' employment on the paper he asked for two show tickets ! The entire office lined up at the opera house -- most of us paying our own way , not to see the Macbeths , but to see Mehronay 's Romeo and Juliet . The office devil , who was late mailing the papers that night , says that about seven o'clock Mehronay came in singing `` Jean , Jean , my Bonnie Jean , '' and that he went to his trunk , took out his celluloid cuffs , a new sky-blue and shell-pink necktie that none of us had seen before , a clean paper collar -- and the boy , who probably was mistaken , swears Mehronay also took his white shirt -- in a bundle which he proudly tucked under his arm and toddled out of the office whistling a wedding march . An hour later , dressed in this regalia and a new black suit , buttoned primly and exactly in a fashion unknown to Mehronay , he appeared at the opera house with Miss Columbia Merley , spinster , teacher of Greek and Hellenic philosophy at the College . The office force asked in a gasp of wonder : `` Who dressed him ? '' Miss Merley -- late in her forties , steel-eyed , thin-chested , flint-faced and with hair knotted so tightly back from her high stony brow that she had to take out two hairpins to wink -- Miss Merley might have done it -- but she had no kith or kin who could have done it for her , and certainly the hand that smoothed the coat buttoned the vest , and the hand that buttoned the vest put on the collar and tie , and as for the shirt -- But that was an office mystery .