Agony Aunts, the
Dotsie and Sadie. Possibly sisters. Possibly even real aunts.
Most of the Guilds have their own laws and some means of enforcing them. The Ankh-Morpork Guild of Seamstresses is no exeption, although what they police are not so much laws as acceptable standards of behaviour. There are some things the ladies of the Shades will not put up with, in short. But no one wants the Watch clumping around the place, putting everyone off and ogling at people who have reasons for not wishing to be ogled, and so when the traditional troll with a big club is not sufficient the Agony Aunts are sent for.
Dotsie is short and plump, Sadie is tall and thin. Neither smiles much, at least not at the things most people would find amusing. Both always dress in black and carry a large handbag. Their actual mode of operation is unclear, but at best an offender will wake up in the street without any clothes and covered in paint in a place where turpentine is really going to hurt. Or may find himself on board a ship headed for the incredibly distant island of Sumtri by way of Cape Terror. Or may, indeed, never be found again at all if the offence warrants it; it is rumoured that merely killing someone is only about halfway up the Aunts' scale of punishments.
They are seldom required these days, and generally spend their afternoons taking tea in some small tea-room somewhere. They are seldom seen talking to one another, exept about matters in hand; the impression is that they did all their talking a long time ago.
The positionof the official Watch on the subject of the Aunts is typical of that pragmatism which is the soul of Ankh-Morpork. Since they know that the Guild has a very flexible approach to what is acceptable and, indeed, natural, they take the view that anyone even capable of complaining to them after the ministrations of the Aunts got let off lightly. But a bottle of turpentine and a scrubbing brush are kept at Pseudopolis Yard for the more pathetic cases.
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