She was still such a child, and yet arguing to herself about spendthrift debtors and self-sacrifice! All this bombast at sixteen and a half.

No, my ungentle reader, not all this bombast at sixteen and a half.

The bombast is mine.

It is my fault if I cannot put into fitting language the thoughts which God put into her young heart.

In her mind's soliloquy, Charley's vices were probably all summed up in the one word, unsteady.