North Stonington, Conn.

STRANGERS wandering through southeastern Connecticut sometimes mistake the sleepy village of North Stonington for Stonington Borough, its busier, pricier and famously quaint cousin to the south. Laurie Pepin, owner of the Watermark, a cafe and art gallery that makes up a large percentage of North Stonington's business district, recalls a visitor who had made this error asking her in a rather flabbergasted tone, ''Is this it?''

''I told her, 'Well, that depends on your definition,' '' Ms. Pepin said. ''This is it to me.''

Those whose weekend refuge is not complete without chic clothing stores, antiques shops, fancy restaurants and yachts bobbing in a harbor should drive on by North Stonington. But if these commercial deficiencies seem like advantages, this village and its enclosing town of the same name can be a good place to settle in.

Sparse Traffic

While the village, with its municipal offices, churches, school, library and well-kept old houses, remains a focal point, most of the town of North Stonington is a gently rolling countryside of green fields and small woodlots. Dairy and horse farms are common, the elementary school play was the entertainment highlight on a recent weekend, and the annual agricultural fair, with oxen-pulling contests and sheep shows, is a prominent July event.

This is territory for strolling in a flower garden, riding a horse or bicycle, or exploring rural lanes where cars are rare, streetlights nonexistent and quiet absolute.

Herbs and Roulette

The cozy Watermark, in a former general store, is the only place in North Stonington village to buy a sandwich or a salad. Part cafe, part herb shop, part art gallery, part gathering place, it has a staff of one. If Ms. Pepin is busy making a sandwich, other customers may have to yell their orders to her in the kitchen.

Outside the village, on busy Route 2, shoppers can browse through craft stalls at Raspberry Junction or have a casual dinner at a small restaurant like Rosie's Around the Clock Grill. Randall's Ordinary, also on Route 2, is an inn and restaurant that dates to 1685 and features open-hearth Colonial cooking. On quiet Chester Maine Road, Jonathan Edwards Winery offers tours and wine-tasting.

But while rural peace and solitude are North Stonington's main draws, buying there hardly equates to signing up for the cloister. The popular Misquamicut and Watch Hill Beaches, in southwestern Rhode Island, are a few miles away to the south. Shops, museums and restaurants are nearby in the coastal village of Mystic and that other Stonington. And it's just a 10-minute drive to the splashiest entertainment spot in Connecticut, Foxwoods casino.

A Couple of Acres

Properties aren't often for sale in the village. This week, a 17-room yellow Victorian-era inn surrounded by a lush rainbow of blooms and priced at $1.1 million was the only property for sale. But elsewhere in town, there is usually something to satisfy the prospective buyer.

The price of pastoral can be fairly steep -- recent offerings included a farmhouse with 100 acres for about $750,000 and a 1780 farmhouse on 14 acres for just under $500,000. But according to Ann Burgess of Pequot Properties, the average price for an 1,800-square-foot home built after 1940, with a couple of acres of land, is about $250,000.

There are also cottages on two small lakes -- Billings and Wyassup -- and on Anderson Pond. The smallest ones can be had for less than $100,000, but they're likely to be unusable in the winter, and the city dweller dreaming of a quiet shoreline for skipping stones should be prepared for the occasional buzz of a motorboat or personal watercraft competing with the bird song.