A World of Girls by L.T. Meade

It was a proverbial saying in the school that Annie Forest was always in hot water; she was exceedingly daring, and loved what she called a spice of danger. This was not the first stolen picnic at which Annie reigned as queen, but this was the largest she had yet organized, and this was the first time she had dared to go out of doors with her satellites.

Hitherto these naughty sprites had been content to carry their baskets full of artfully-concealed provisions to a disused attic which was exactly over the box-room, and consequently out of reach of the inhabited part of the house. Here, making a table of a great chest which stood in the attic, they feasted gloriously, undisturbed by the musty smell or by the innumerable spiders and beetles which disappeared rapidly in all directions at their approach; but when Annie one day incautiously suggested that on summer nights the outside world was all at their disposal, they began to discover flaws in their banqueting hall. Mary Price said the musty smell made her half sick; Phyllis declared that at the sight of a spider she invariably turned faint; and Susan Drummond was heard to murmur that in a dusty, fusty attic even meringues scarcely kept her awake. The girls were all wild to try a midnight picnic out of doors, and Annie in her present mood, was only too eager for the fun.