They were unhappy and in a hurry to get clear of the trees; they started if a mouse stirred, and when an owl hooted they seized their swords.

If a mouse so much as stirred in the room at night, the Secret Service came running.

Traffic volume in and around the mall at Routes 4 and 17 was so bad that not even a mouse could stir.

Not a mouse stirring as he walked, and there, under rolling cloud all besilvered, he saw it, the Theatre, with something like disappointment.

The mouse in the tiny crib stirred again, sighed, and made a wet sound.

I was reading Russell Baker's Christmas Day column in The New York Times, and taking time to realize that it was his valediction, when a mouse stirred in the attic of memory.

"Not a mouse could stir in Europe without our permission," was the way he visualized an Anglo-German alliance.

But not a mouse stirs.

Not so much as a mouse stirred, which brought to mind another consideration.