The next day the king had in truth grown most decidedly worse. The court physicians went about with anxious faces and the whole palace had become a place of deepest gloom.
Linda Branca put on her dress of blue embroidered with gold and again peeped into the window of the royal bedchamber.
Now the king had lain upon his richly carved bed with his eyes fixed every moment upon the window where the face had appeared. He did not close his eyes at all.
"He can't live long if this keeps up," one court physician whispered to another.
He had just finished saying these words when the king gave a loud cry and sprang from his bed. He ran to the window and reached it just in time to catch a piece of the skirt of blue embroidered in gold. He held it tight.
"Masquerader, unmask!" he cried.
Linda Branca had hastily put on the mask which she had brought with her, and now she looked up at the king with the face of the little servant he had hired. She took off the mask and smiled into his eyes.
"Now at last I know who is the beautiful stranger from the land of the boot and the land of the hairbrush!" cried the king.
When Linda Branca had told the king, the queen mother and all the courtiers her whole story everybody laughed.
"Who ever before heard of a maiden who wanted to be less beautiful than Nature had made her!" cried the wise men.