Paddy the Next Best Thing (also written as Paddy-The-Next-Best-Thing) is a 1908 romantic comedy novel by the British writer Gertrude Page. The heroine of the story is Paddy Adair, the daughter of an impoverished Irish landowner near Carlingford. Her father, General Adair, had hoped she would be a boy, but is delighted by the high-spirited Paddy who dubs herself as "the next best thing" to a boy. Paddy falls in love with another landowner, who had once been involved with her elder sister. Source: Wikipedia (en)